Scarlet Wakefield 02 - Kisses and Lies

by Lauren Henderson

  Callum drags himself onto the floor beside me, panting as if he’s run an obstacle course. He grabs hold of me, patting his hands up and down my body, his eyes wild.

  “Scarlett! Are you all right? Scarlett!”

  I nod mutely. My entire body is burning with the agony of straining my muscles way beyond their natural limits, but I think I’d know if I’d been shot.

  Or would I? With the amount of adrenaline pumping through me, would I really know? And would Callum know if he’d been shot? The thought scares me so much I sit up and scan him with equal, wild-eyed panic. I can’t see any blood on him, thank God. . . .

  It sounds mad, but we’re so intensely focused on each other, after what we’ve just been through, that it’s not until we’ve ensured that we’re both unharmed that we even think to look around us. Catriona’s sprawled on the floor, facedown, several feet from us. The shotgun barrel is just visible below her. And across the room, body at a weird angle against the wall, head twisted round, is—

  “Taylor!”

  I jump to my feet, all pain forgotten, and race across the room. If Taylor’s been hurt saving our lives, I’ll never forgive myself.

  “Taylor!” I kneel down beside her. “Taylor, are you okay? Taylor!”

  I take her head between my hands and turn it gently, my heart pounding with fear. Please, please tell me she hasn’t broken her neck.

  Taylor’s eyes snap open like someone in a horror film coming back to life. I scream again, something I’m doing much too much this afternoon, but again, all I produce is a hoarse croak.

  “Ow!” she says crossly. “Stop twisting me!” She gets her hands under her and lifts herself up. “My back hurts really bad,” she complains.

  But suddenly there’s a howl from Callum, so raw and wounded that I spin round, terrified that somehow he’s realized that, after all, he’s been shot.

  He’s kneeling beside his sister’s body. He’s turned her over, and she’s lying in his arms, her head flopping back over his arm at an angle just as odd as Taylor’s was. But Taylor didn’t have a huge red stain on her chest, a stain that looks as if it’s spreading out even as I stare, horrified, at Callum. He puts one hand against her neck, looking for a pulse. And I see from his expression, simultaneously horrified and also, awfully, relieved, that he can’t find one.

  Catriona is dead.

  I get up and walk slowly toward Callum, as slow as if I were walking through water, because my entire body is screaming with pain. And when I reach him, I kneel down beside him and put my arm around him. I don’t know what I’m expecting, but he turns to me, and awkwardly, over Catriona’s body, he leans into me and puts both his arms around me. His head sinks till it’s resting on my shoulder. With my other hand, I stroke his hair, his poignantly short stubbly hair, and I take the weight of him on me, holding him as he sobs against me, his tears wetting my sweater as I burst into tears myself. The relief of finally letting my guard down, sobbing my heart out, while Callum and I hold each other, is unbelievable.

  Taylor is as white as a sheet as she looks at Catriona’s body.

  “I grabbed her, and she tried to hit me with the gun. I ducked and she tripped and sent me flying . . . ,” she says. “I tried to get the gun away from her, but she wouldn’t let go, and then she fell against it and it went off. I didn’t mean . . .”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Taylor,” I manage to say to her. “You saved our lives. It wasn’t your fault.”

  I take my hand from Callum’s head and hold it out to her. Wincing, she makes her way across to us and kneels down beside us, looking at Catriona, holding my hand.

  I can’t be sure, because I know how much Taylor would hate it if I ever caught her crying. So, deliberately, I look away.

  But I’m pretty sure that tears are pouring down her face too.

  twenty-three

  IT NEVER LASTS

  I see the turning to Prestwick airport up ahead, and look over at Callum as the Land Rover slows down and eases into the left-hand lane. It’s too noisy in the jeep to have any sort of conversation that doesn’t involve yelling. This is a really old model that Callum told me proudly has been “in the family” for thirty years or so. It looks like it’s held together with duct tape and rubber bands. Callum handles it very confidently, but then, I suspect he’s been driving it round the estate since he was fourteen or so, like most country boys.

  It’s a huge relief not to be able to talk for the moment. There’s been so much talking in the last twenty-four hours: doctors, police, the McAndrews, telling the same story over and over again, how I went out for a walk and met Callum, how we decided to go up in the tower and do some target shooting, and how we found Catriona there, victim of a fatal accident, having obviously tripped and fallen over her own gun. Only Moira, having seen me in such a hurry to find Callum an hour before, knows there’s more to the story than that, and Moira’s not telling. I don’t know how much Moira suspects, if anything, but certainly she didn’t say a word to the police about me seeming distressed or desperate to find Callum. And the police, clearly brimming with sympathy for the poor McAndrew family, with two such terrible tragedies happening in the short space of six months, were all too happy to take Callum’s and my word for what we found in the tower, and take Catriona’s body away on a stretcher.

  They said it’s very unlikely there will be an inquest, and even if there is, I won’t need to come back to Castle Airlie. I’ve got nothing to tell the coroner that Callum can’t: anything I’d say would be a line-for-line corroboration of his story.

  I won’t be coming back here ever again. I’ve been involved in too many of this family’s tragedies. The sight of Mrs. McAndrew hearing that a second child of hers had died in a horrible accident was almost too much to bear. I don’t think she’ll ever truly recover. Mr. McAndrew looks like a ghost of himself, gray and faded; his hair actually went several shades whiter overnight. Callum, I think, is still in shock. I don’t know if it’s really sunk in yet that his sister killed his brother and tried to kill him, all so that she could inherit Castle Airlie. He’s been so busy telling lies and trying to take care of his mother that he hasn’t had much time for himself.

  And we’ve been no use to each other. What we went through was so horrible that our eyes are still wide and frightened. The memory of looking at each other, sure we were both about to die, is unbelievably vivid. I could hardly get to sleep last night; I barricaded my door from the inside with the chest of drawers, even though I knew that this night was the first in Castle Airlie that I couldn’t be in any danger, because Dan’s killer was dead. I sat up shaking and whispering to Taylor on the phone. We talked half through the night about nothing at all, just to hear someone else’s voice, a friend’s, not to feel alone after what we’d gone through that afternoon. Poor Taylor had to go back and spend the night at the B and B by herself. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t think of a plausible story that would cover her presence at the scene. I wanted to go and spend the night there with her, but we all decided that would look weird too. And considering how desperately we were trying to pass off Catriona’s death as a freak shooting accident, the last thing anyone wanted was any kind of suspicious circumstances that might lead them to think there was more to the story than we were telling.

  Taylor asked me last night, or maybe in the early hours of the morning, whether I wished I’d never started out on the path to investigate Dan’s death. And I had to say no—because if I hadn’t, Callum would be dead too. In an awful way, that makes everything really simple. I can’t have any regrets. As Taylor pointed out, who knows if Catriona would even have stopped at just killing her brothers? Who’s to say that, having got away with two murders, she wouldn’t have grown impatient at not inheriting the castle as soon as she’d like, and turned her focus on her father, too?

  Trust Taylor to be able to look the worst possibility clearly in the face.

  No, I was right to want to find out who killed Dan, even though my quest st
arted out being only an attempt to clear my own name. I look back at the naive girl who, six months ago, kissed a boy for the first time, only to see him drop dead at her feet, the girl who was a passive participant in her own life, and I’m amazed to realize that I hardly recognize her. I’ve come so far since then; I’ve learned so much about myself and what I can do.

  I really like who I am now. I like this Scarlett. I’m strong and I can think on my feet; I can be sneaky when I need to. I’m brave enough to kiss a boy and funny enough to banter with him. But why did my growing-up have to be at such a high cost? Why did Dan have to die? Why did Taylor have to cause Catriona’s death, even by accident, and why did Callum have to find out that his sister was trying to kill him?

  I shiver. I have to stop asking myself this kind of thing. Because something else I’ve learned is that some questions don’t have satisfactory answers, and asking them is like bashing your head against a brick wall till you’re bleeding.

  With much clashing and grinding of gears, Callum slows down the Land Rover on the ramp and pulls it to a halt outside the Departures entrance. I expect him to jump out and drag my suitcase out from the back, but he stays where he is, turning to look at me.

  “Scarlett . . . ,” he begins, clearing his throat. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “It’s okay,” I mumble, embarrassed. “I don’t know what to say either.”

  “But there’s stuff I have to say to you,” he insists. “I was a bastard to you from the moment you arrived. I didn’t want you there and I made it really clear.” He sets his jaw, obviously not enjoying this apology. “And it turned out you were the only person who was really on my side.”

  “Well, I was—”

  “Trying to find out the truth about Dan,” he says, finishing my sentence. “And you were right not to tell any of us what you were doing. We wouldn’t have believed you until it was too late. You saved my life.” He looks down at me, his eyes full of emotion. “I can’t ever repay you for that.”

  “It’s okay. Really,” I say awkwardly.

  “And that’s not all.” He rubs his hand over his head. “That afternoon when you were in the woods by the drive, and you thought someone was shooting at you?”

  Oh my God, I think, if Callum’s about to tell me that was him, I don’t think I’ll be able to handle it.

  “It was Lucy,” he confesses. “She just told me last night. You know, when she came round and we had that fight?”

  I nod. We didn’t sit down to dinner last night; Moira just made sandwiches and put them in the breakfast room in case anyone was hungry. Which mostly, of course, we weren’t. But Lucy came to see how Callum was, and they had a screaming fight which culminated in Lucy storming out and yelling at Callum all down the main staircase. I stare at Callum now, unable to believe that it was Lucy shooting at me in the wood. From the moment I realized that Catriona had killed Dan, I assumed it was Catriona who had done that, too, though I couldn’t work out why she would have wanted to shoot at me.

  “She said she was jealous of you,” Callum’s admitting.

  I don’t understand.

  “Jealous of me?” I blurt out.

  Callum colors up.

  “She said she didn’t like the way I looked at you,” he mumbles.

  Oh. I feel myself blushing too.

  “So I broke up with her as soon as she told me,” he continues. “I mean, that’s just insane—she could have killed you! And she got really angry when I broke up with her.” He sighs. “I had no idea she was capable of anything like that. She said all this stuff like she was sure you’d been snooping in Dan’s room, and in Dad’s office—she was really paranoid about you.”

  I don’t say anything. I’m not going to tell Callum that Lucy was right: that I was snooping, that she’s not as paranoid as Callum thinks. Because if Lucy is lunatic enough to take a shotgun and start firing it in my general direction, she’s not the kind of person Callum, or anyone, should be going out with, and I shouldn’t do anything to encourage him to see her in a better light.

  “Oh Callum, I’m really sorry this happened now,” I say hopelessly. “It’s awful that you’ve had a breakup on top of everything else.”

  I can feel how alone Callum is, having lost his brother and sister, and now with no girlfriend to comfort him.

  He shrugs. “I didn’t have a choice,” he says sadly.

  We sit quietly for a minute or so, and then someone behind us honks their horn. Callum jumps down from the Land Rover and hauls my suitcase out of the back. I climb down—going a bit slower than normal, because I’m sore all over—and join him on the pavement.

  “Thank you again, Scarlett,” he says, looking down at me, his gray eyes very serious.

  “It’s okay,” I mumble, thoroughly embarrassed.

  He holds up a hand to stop me.

  “I owe you from now on. I mean that. I promise that if you ever need help, wherever you are, you can just ask me and I’ll come. That’s a promise. You can always count on me.”

  I look up at him, speechless. And then he bends down, puts his hands on my shoulders, and kisses me, very gently, on the lips. I’m so shocked and surprised that I just stand there as he holds me close for his kiss. I’m much too confused to kiss him back: there’s his similarity to Dan (though that’s faded considerably, the more I’ve got to know Callum, and the more I’ve found out about Dan). And there’s Jase, too, the unresolved business with him. If this were Jase, I’d be kissing him back with everything I had, and it’s partly because of Jase that I can’t really respond to Callum, because I’m so confused right now about what I feel.

  I never knew before that you could be attracted to two boys at the same time. Now I know you can. I feel like I’m strapped to the steepest learning curve in the world, and I don’t know when it will ever stop.

  I should probably be pushing Callum away, but I’m not. I can’t. This kiss is incredibly comforting somehow: very sweet, very soft. It’s so good to be close to someone, held against his body, that I drink it in, aware that I have no idea when I’ll get this kind of comfort again. All I can hear is Callum’s breathing; all I can feel is his hands on my shoulders, his warm lips against mine. I lift one of my hands to stroke his head, his soft short hair, and tell myself it’s to soothe him, though I think I’ve been wanting to run my hand over that short hair ever since I saw him.

  And as I do so, I think, like a cold stab to my heart, the voice of reason and sanity: I will never do this again. I will never be kissed again by Callum McAndrew. I will never touch him anymore, ever, in my life.

  Finally, he lifts his head. We pull away from each other and stand staring into each other’s faces. The noises of the outside world flood in: honking cars, people shouting to one another and pushing past us, the whine of airplanes above our heads. We had such a brief moment of pushing everything but us away. I think that’s what the kiss was really about for both of us, a moment to forget all the horror we’ve just lived through. Catriona’s dead, bloody body. Callum’s parents, white-faced and old-looking. The truth of how Dan died. For the moment of the kiss, we weren’t thinking about it: we were just two warm bodies, touching, giving each other a basic, primitive relief, like animals, and I’m more grateful for it than I can say.

  But it never lasts. The world shoves its way back in whether you like it or not, and its presence changes everything.

  “You know we can’t—” Callum starts, but I’m already nodding.

  I know we can’t. How could we? Even if it weren’t for Jase and my feelings for him. Callum’s brother died after kissing me. I saw Callum’s sister try to murder him, not to mention me. Too many terrible things have happened between me and the McAndrew family.

  I bend over to grab the handle of my suitcase. I can’t look at Callum anymore. When I first saw him, all I could see was Dan. But now Dan’s face has dissolved from my memory, replaced by Callum. Those life-and-death minutes I spent holding Callum over the edge of that drop, looking d
own into his face, will never leave me.

  I turn away from him and walk through the automatic doors into the terminal. I’m determined not to look back, but a few steps in, I can’t help it. I swing back and look over my shoulder, hoping he’s not still there.

  He is. He’s watching me walk away. I raise a hand to him. And as he lifts his hand to wave goodbye in return, he smiles at me, such a sweet smile that the tears prick at my eyes and I have to swallow really hard.

  It’s the first time Callum McAndrew has ever really smiled at me. And it’ll be the last.

  Taylor’s waiting for me in the coffee shop. She looks as exhausted as I feel, like she slept in her clothes. There are dark circles under her eyes and her skin, usually a thick milky white, is grayish, as if she’s been in a basement for days, without natural light. She’s wearing low-slung combat trousers and a chunky Arran sweater she bought in the village, and there’s a small rucksack propped by her chair, probably containing nothing but changes of underwear and socks, plus her toothbrush. Typical of Taylor to travel really light.

  Her expression, as she catches sight of me, is appalled.

  “What happened?” she asks, jumping up. “You look like someone else died.”

  “Callum just kissed me goodbye,” I manage.

  “Oh no,” Taylor says, getting it immediately. “You can’t—”

  “I know, I know,” I say, wearily.

  Taylor sits down again, pushing a coffee toward me.

  “I got you a gingerbread latte,” she says. “I thought you might need cheering up.”

  This is such a deliberate understatement that, despite my misery, I can’t help cracking a little laugh. I sit down and take a swig of my latte.

  Taylor grimaces. “What was it like at the castle this morning?”

  “Moira was going round clearing the drink bottles from the bar in the Great Hall,” I say sadly, “because Mrs. McAndrew was really drunk last night. Moira didn’t say anything, but I’m sure it was so that Mrs. McAndrew couldn’t get hold of any more alcohol.”